It’s Been Too Long…. the Nintendo Prime Official Site is Back!

Where do I start with this one? I guess let’s just hop back to the day this site vanished… August 5th, 2017. Heck, really this all started truly in full on April 30th, 2017. Nintendo Prime (as a site) has existed partially as a site and an idea dating back to February 2016, but truly things didn’t kick into full gear until April 30th. You see, that day is going to always be special to me as it was my final day as Editor-in-Chief of Zelda Informer. The final day I wrote anything for a site I practically built over the course of 8 years. Not alone, mind you, but that day will have likely no significance to anyone but me.

From that day forward, everything in my professional life became about Nintendo Prime. At the time, we had an ongoing podcast and then… this site. My original vision for Nintendo Prime involved taking this site to the levels I had previously taken Zelda Informer too. A buzzing and high flying Facebook and Twitter following, a site serving millions of fans news and original content. Diving deep into the traditional “gaming journalism” route that I had grown accustomed too over the past 18 years.

Needless to say, times have changed, and honestly, I hadn’t changed with them. After branching out on my own, no guaranteed paychecks coming to my pocket, I quickly was reminded just how hard it is to start my vision for this site from ground zero. Something had to change. That’s when I think, for maybe the first time ever, that YouTube is far more than just this place I occasionally watch a funny video.

I’ve long known about people making a living on YT, but widely considered it a rare occurrence. It largely still is. After making an agreement that allowed me to take over the Zelda Informer YouTube channel, which I basically ran for 8 years anyways, I rebranded it to Nintendo Prime and started to create videos. At first, just our podcast in video format, but later, making small news vidoes, discussion pieces, and more. My original plan was YT as an aside, but then out of nowhere, YT was making money. A month in, YT had produced more revenue than all the time I had spent working on Nintendo Prime as a website the past year. IT became pretty clear to me, YT had to become the central focus point moving forward. I’ve seen many youtubers complain about drops in CPM and such.

A look inside YT and how it impacts us, being transparent here.

I’m sorry but, as someone who ran a website, getting over $1 CPM was a godsend. YT CPM rarely dips below $5. I have been doing it wrong for years.

I didn’t forget the site. I kept it going somewhat strong through E3 until the fateful day it vanished, but I focused on YouTube content. It has largely been a success. It lead to us signing with a big network, getting products to review, and has enabled my family to have a more stable income. It’s great! But, it’s not everything. I was still going paycheck to paycheck and then one day I realized I couldn’t afford to keep the website’s doors open anymore.

So, they closed. The site itself didn’t make money. It was hard to justify the work it took and the money it took to keep it open.

Fast forward to today. The website is back. But, it’s not just “back”, as the past few months have allowed me to reflect on what my overall goals are for Nintendo Prime. Are we a YouTube entity for good? Do websites like this even matter in today’s format? Are they viable?

I realized it doesn’t matter. I have a dream, and while that dream has expanded into new areas, it hasn’t changed.

Nintendo Prime is a YouTube entity first and foremost, because that’s what pays the bills, it’s content I enjoy making, but this website is home. Nintendo Prime isn’t just what pays the bills, it’s also a community, one which deserves to foster through a multitude of avenues. Facebook, Twitter, traditional news reporting? Nintendo Prime should be doing all of that and have a budding YouTube channel to go along with it. Nintendo Prime should, quite literally, be all of the above. An all encompassing behemoth that serves as many Nintendo fans across as many mediums as possible.

So yes, we’ll have daily YouTube videos. We’ll have dozens of news posts here every day. We’ll have social media channels posting create content and actually trying to be social (imagine, being social on social media, what is that anyways?), we’ll have weekly livestreams and maybe someday a live news show. It’s a massive undertaking, a huge vision, but it’s my dream. A dream I am going to make a reality, starting today.

The only difference that you’ll see here in terms of the type of content we do is that I won’t really be creating many “editorials”. There will be one here or there, but in general, I am going to focus on catering editorial like work into videos. I may put the scripts right here on the site too, but we shall see. Whatever happens, the site isn’t going to be left behind. For now, it’s just me. Slaving away with 100 hour work weeks to make this dream happen. I’ll eventually bring in some quality volunteer writers to help with the news side of things, but I need to prove this dream first. Make it a reality. Will it into existence.

This website is going to be the central hub for all of our content. If you want certain content we do faster, absolutely you should subscribe to us on YouTube and Twitch. Especially if you want to partake in Q and A sessions and have your comments appear during our livestreams. But I am going to ensure almost everything we do is always here for you in some fashion. The exception to this, however, is Patreon. Yes, we are crowd funded kind of place, because we live in a world where all your eggs really shouldn’t be in one basket. Plus, is everything I want to do realistically feasible financially? No, and this site is kind of a shining example of it.

Patreon has some exclusive content that only being a Patreon backer gets access too. Behind the scenes vlogs, as an example. An exclusive livestream just for backers. Special access to our discord server (yes, we have one), a special role on our community forums, the ability to directly contact me, and more. Patreon support right now is catered around YouTube, but not exclusively so. As an example, our next stretch goal is for game reviews, of which we’d have a written version right here on the site (with our video version conveniently included). You can support us for as little as $1 or for as much as… heck, you can literally sponsor us and advertise whatever you want for $100.

We have someone working on a new, fresh look for this place and our forums behind the scenes we hope to launch in the coming weeks and potentially a ground breaking take on this whole website shtick at some point in 2018. I am sorry this place was abandoned, forgotten, and left for dead. hard times befall us all.

But it’s back, Nintendo Prime is beginning to feel whole again. Thanks for coming back and giving us a chance. Now if you don’t mind, I have some news to post and videos to make and… a podcast to get out the door!

Nathanial Rumphol-Janc

A veteran in the video game media sphere, Nathanial co-founded Gamnesia, founded MetroidWiki.org, ran the news the segment on the Zelda Universe Podcast, found and ran Zelda Domain from 1998 to 2006, and built Zelda Informer as the Editor-in-Chief from 2008 to 2017. He now owns and operates Nintendo Prime. You can follow him on twitter @NateJanc, otherwise just stay tuned at Nintendo Prime for more of his work.